RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v
# THE LIBRARY OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

# REPORT FOR THE YEAR 1983-1984

Since the retirement of H. A. Rydings, Esq., last year, and his resignation from the Council, there has been a quiet period of gradual takeover. This has been followed by a wild flurry of activity caused by the donation to the Society of a large number of books from the collection of the late W. V. Pennell, Esq. These came to us via the University of Hong Kong Library and will boost the size of our collection considerably. My intention is to produce an additions list this year. This will provide members with details of the new books. Approximately 280 titles have been added since the last edition of the catalogue which must be a record for the Society. This total also includes gifts from Dr. James Hayes and from the International Cultural Society of Korea. There is only one pessimistic note. This is the recurrent problem of accommodation which has inevitably raised its head with such an influx of material. It may be necessary in the end to re-locate the journal collection but preferable alternatives are being sought. On the subject of journals, the purchase of Volumes 1-18 of Monumenta Serica this year establishes almost a complete run of this title. We have also a new exchange journal to add, The Journal of East Asian Affairs which comes from Korea.

In all it has been a most productive year.

14th March 1984.

xvii

V. E. MORGAN

Hon. Librarian
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j
84

+27

The Center was founded on 1 October, 1978 by Professor Chou Wen-chung, a Chinese American composer and Vice Dean of Columbia University's School of the Arts. He believed, as he expressed when the Center began to operate, that "the coming decade should witness a major thrust in the arts in China, one similar to those we see in science and higher education" and that the "partnership between the United States and China... is a natural one that will reap benefits for both countries and contribute to the cultural advancement of the world." Specifically, the Center's programme is organized to initiate and facilitate the exchange of specialists, students, materials, performances and exhibitions, special projects and information on both the performing and visual arts. It creates and promotes projects of an ongoing nature rather than sponsoring isolated events.28 Though the Center took on the role of serving as the direct counterpart to the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles in late 1980 at the recommendation of the Chinese Government, its emphasis has been on exchanging specialists between educational institutions. In the first two years of operation, the Center sponsored the visits of three exchange specialists to and three from China. The Center also sponsored two American delegations to China on **observation tours** and one Music and Arts Education Delegation to the United States, which was led by Lin Mohan, Vice Minister of Culture of China. In succeeding years, though other programmes continued, the Center worked actively in promoting exchanges in arts education, such as sponsoring Chinese students going to the United States.

The Center's financial support was provided primarily by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). Specific programmes of exchange were funded by grants from foundations, corporations, and individuals. The Center also relied on unrestricted contributions and donations of services and art exchange materials. As the Center reported in November 1981, the RBF had renewed its 1978-1980 grant for two more years and the Ford Foundation had pledged continued financial support for three more years." A number of other foundations, corporations, and other organizations, including the Henry Luce Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council and the United Board For Christian Higher Education, have provided financial support and many other institutions and individuals contributed to the Center's work in various ways.

Obviously, to discuss the motivations of the individuals and organization in supporting the Center's work is difficult, if not impossible.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
142

The Society's archive, which is currently held under Mr. David Gilkes' arrangements in the Main Library of The Chinese University and comprises papers on the formation of the Branch together with most of our Council Minutes over the years, is another source of information for our historian. Venues can be ascertained from these papers.

If Ian Diamond, Hong Kong's first Government Archivist and our former Hon. Secretary and Vice-President, will forgive me for mentioning it here, the venue that I best remember was the small room in the Public Records Office used for our Council meetings in the early 1980s (when Ian was on overseas leave we went to the "Bull and Bear" across the road!). A portrait of Her Majesty the Queen hung, as a scroll painting, on the wall; but as the years went on, the scroll became considerably the worse for wear, browning and curling in at the sides. We used to comment on this quietly periodically, but nothing happened. Finally, at one Council meeting, from the chair, and meaning no disrespect to Her Majesty, I took the bull by the horns and in a loud voice asked Ian when he was going to "remount the Queen"; whereupon the meeting became somewhat disorderly.

The Future: Post 1997

Turning from past to future, at the time of writing, our Society is just as active and energetic as in the past; but with 1997 just around the corner, it is only natural for us to wonder what will happen thereafter. I remain of the view that we have a valuable role to play; but as in other Asian countries - and despite the hoped-for continued participation of a small nucleus of local Chinese who will remain dedicated to the work and ideals of the RAS - it is likely that it will, as hitherto, continue mainly to be set among and directed at Hong Kong's expatriate community. There will be a difference here, too: for as has already been happening in recent years, this will more and more be composed of transients, with far fewer long-term non-Chinese residents than in the long post-war period. There will, correspondingly, be an even greater need for the RAS to provide more "cultural bridges" to the local community. Thus, the study of Asia - and of Hong Kong and China with it - will surely continue to be (in Professor Drake's words) the Society's main "Heritage and Task".

However, the likely change in expatriate membership may cause problems in recruiting some of the leadership and expertise upon which
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579
2

Councillors (of whom 20 would be elected from both Chinese and expatriate jurors, or property-holders of a certain value with residential qualifications), and potentially extendible functions. However Young's successor, Sir Alexander Grantham, soon had second thoughts which were warmly shared by his Executive Council (Exco) advisers, and the plans were put into cold storage, to be quietly forgotten. They had seemed to reduce the wholly centralised powers of the Governor-in-Council, besides being of apparently little interest to a mobile and volatile Cantonese population, passing by customary right freely to and fro across the international border, and more concerned with rebuilding their lives after the war's privations. Besides, the Communist victory over the Chiang Kai-shek Nationalists, and the declaration of the People's Republic in 1949, created a new set of problems. It became common parlance that Hong Kong was "different." Unlike African, Caribbean, Asian and Pacific colonies, it could not be built into a Nation.

In facing such a novel threat there were cultural divisions within Hong Kong's administration in the 1950s and 60s that commentators have often overlooked. The most obvious was that between those prisoners-of-war or internees during the Japanese occupation who had been judged physically fit to return to post-war duties, and their colleagues who either had fought throughout (in China or in other theatres) or had been recruited subsequently but had served in no other territory. They might differ in their views of what threatened stability, but were in agreement that nothing should, in the cant phrase of the time, "rock the boat." All tended to accept what is now dubbed the economic 'trickle-down' theory, that what was good for the businessmen who dominated the Colony's appointed Councils was good for their employees - and equally for a large proportion of the population that had voted with its feet by flooding into Hong Kong to escape Communism, and also to find employment until it might seem safe to exercise their right to cross the border again and go home. But it seemed to some observers that those who claimed to understand and to love the Colony best had least faith in its unsinkability.

A smaller but growing subset consisted of those colonial servants who had been transferred to Hong Kong within Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service (HMOCS) from other territories, usually upon the grant of independence, or who had accepted fixed renewable contracts as mature entrants ("retreads"). Such officers might well have learnt in
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390
The council members believed that Sai Kung would definitely be the most suitable location for developing a tourism centre to cater for both domestic and foreign visitors. They realized the market for 'non-urban based modern large-scale recreational and leisure facilities.' The district was visualized to be fully developed as an ‘Asian Pacific Tourist and Recreation Centre,' consisting of four main elements: the natural environment and scenery, historical and cultural features, outdoor sports and recreation (especially water-based ones), and science-based facilities. Other transportation and infrastructural facilities were also suggested in the plan.

Although this plan was not approved, it demonstrated the interests of the local community in developing their homeland in tourism. Most of the council members are from the local community, and the academic representative in the council is the president of the HKUST, which is located in the Sai Kung district. The other members are mostly president or vice-president of rural committees. In order to collect information for the proposal, these members have visited various famous tourism attractions all over the world, including Australia and Singapore, and met important people in those developments. They consulted specialists in developing tourism in Australia for the plan. They spent a total of HK$3 million (US$386,600) on the whole project. The Sai Kung District Development Foundation is dedicated to enhance Hong Kong's attractions in order to 'out-compete our regional neighbours and to sustain the promised growth of our tourist industry.' Their enthusiasm and determination in developing their homeland is undisputed.

As evident in the above cases, different parties play a part in the development of environmental conservation and tourism. The success of development often depends on effective communication and cooperation between these parties. For each of the cases, the support from the local community within the development is a key element in developing the homeland of those indigenous people and the sustainability of a development often depends on this factor.

As I have mentioned, Sai Kung district was designated as one of the two centres for recreation and leisure activities in the twenty-first century; the objective of the Southeast New Territories Development Strategy Review (SENTDSR) was to carry out the planning of the district. The idea of a Sai Kung leisure garden was considered a complex
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